


Icarus

by Sunevial



Category: Discord Murder Party (Podcast)
Genre: Blood, Death, Gen, Gore, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 13:30:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18993598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunevial/pseuds/Sunevial
Summary: Project PhoenixFile status: CorruptedNote: There seems to have been some doctoring of the footage, as impossible scenarios play out in this video. Many who have viewed this video have also claimed to have seen vivid hallucinations immediately afterwards. Proceed with caution.





	Icarus

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thanks to kylethewarrior who allowed me to heavily borrow from his own rendition of the Part Timer's backstory.

Harsh white lights flickered on one by one, casting away all shadows in the laboratory room. Glass vials were neatly arranged on stainless steel tables, each one meticulously labeled and placed into its corresponding tray. Despite state of the art ventilation systems and switching to a less potent cleaning solution, the room still reeked of bleach and chloroform. There was little to be done about that; scientific progress certainly didn’t care about things smelling nice.

Checking the computer screen to his right, the man opened one of the glass refrigerators, thumbing through vial after vial of prepared syringe fluid. Last week’s experiments had gone…rather poorly in the grand scheme of this project.. The first test subject hadn’t responded at all to the modified serum, and the second…well, rapid increases in blood pressure certainly had made an awful mess to clean up. It was an unfortunate loss, especially considering both had nearly perfect genetic matches for the trials. 

That, of course, had been the problem: nearly perfect. A ninety-nine percent match still left a one percent error, and that was more than enough wiggle room for mutations to interfere with this incredibly delicate cocktail of chemicals. Finding specimens was already proving more difficult; there was only so much misdirection he could give before people started realizing that his ‘super soldier genetic enhancement experiments’ were…not exactly accurate. 

Was body hunting the most ‘ethical’ thing to do in a situation like this? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Ethics were subjective anyways, laws and codes cooked up by humans too scared to accept that reality is messy and requires sacrifice at times. The progress, the discovery, this breakthrough would be more than worth sacrificing arbitrary ‘morals’ in order to achieve. He already knew the ends would more than justify the means.

He simply had to prove it.

With cold precision, the man selected three vials and placed them onto a nearby tray, glass clattering against steel. He moved to one of the cabinets, grabbing an equal number of syringes and inspecting them for defects. Even the slightest of imperfections could prove disastrous for this round of trials. After a thorough inspection, he arranged them into a neat pile. The snap of latex gloves echoed against sterile walls, followed by the grading unzipping of plastic body bags.

“Well, aren’t you all sights for sorry eyes?” the man said with a chuckle, habitually dusting his hands off. Three men, all of differing heights and builds, and all irrefutably dead. Looking over the set up with a nod and a smile, he reached into his pocket and brought out a small remote. A click and hanging lamps descended from the ceiling, turning towards the three lifeless bodies and bathing them in warm light. “There you are, gentlemen, now you all have a bit more color to your everything. Please, hold your thanks, it’s really the least I could do.”

Not expecting any real response, the man decided to hold his tongue against making yet another smart remark. Better to save those for press releases and nosy coworkers as opposed to a bunch of dead men. Taking the remote once again, he pressed the largest button in the center, watching a small camera on the far shelf flicker to life. A smile came to his lips as he counted down the seconds, smoothing his scrubs down to sharp creases, before pressing on the record button.

“May 27th of…hm, I’m not sure I’m legally allowed to say what year it is,” the man said, his voice clear and articulate. He stood with perfect posture, tall and proud. “Log number 57964, trial 5,678. Today, I happen to have the luxury of three test subjects.”

Walking with slow and deliberate steps, the man stopped in front of the first body. His skin was ashen gray, pulling taught at a scrawny frame. On his head was a shock of silver hair, a strange sight on a face so young. “A notorious serial killer, his body count is estimated to be at approximately forty-five victims. He died of a heart attack just days ago, presumably due to stress related hallucinations,” the man said, his tone even and without judgement. “Strong in spirit, unmatched in viciousness, but weak in mind.”

The man took another step, pausing behind the body in the center. This man was truly a scholar in build, short and more accustomed to simple work environments. A fracture ran down the length of his skull, cracking his left eye. “A doctor, considered the best practitioner of emergency medicine in life. He was killed by a blow to the temple, an injury sustained from our third subject,” he said, pausing to wipe away a drop of blood leaking from the doctor’s temple. “Strong in mind, unmatched in intellect, but weak in body.”

One more step, and the man stood behind the last body in the line up. He was a monstrous figure, built for war and the danger of the battlefield. Grayed hair placed him nearing middle age, though his bloodied and battered body rendered finer details all but impossible. “A general, one of the best in his unit and a proper soldier. Father to the killer and killer of the doctor, he certainly put up a fight until his last,” the man said, suppressing a chuckle at the thought of their…altercation. “Strong in body, unmatched in bravery, weak in mercy.” 

Snapping a surgical mask over his face, the man picked up a syringe and popped off the plastic cap. He carefully drew the liquid into the needle and gave the plastic casing a number of taps, breaking up any errant air bubbles. “For today’s trial, I will be using the lastest strand of the JX49 “Phoenix” Genome,” he said, glancing down at the body of the serial killer. “As hypothesized, this genome carries the property to reverse cell death and to permanently prevent cell decay. Should it succeed, mortality will no longer be a thing of consequence.”

He pressed the needle against the man’s arm, finding a bit of muscle tissue still loose enough to pierce. Brief memories flashed across his mind, of a woman he had onced loved, of children leaping into his arms and begging him to go out and play, of all of them taken long before their time by diseases even he couldn’t hope to cure. But they weren’t gone. Not yet. 

Science had solved so many mysteries already.

What was death compared to lightspeed travel?

Without a moment’s hesitation, he pushed every last drop of fluid into the body, immediately taking a step back once the process was complete. 

_Haunted by visions and voices that no one else could understand, a broken mind trapped in a breaking body, the hunt and the kill is just a game, a childlike innocence mixed with tidal waves of insanity._

For a moment, the lab was as silent, save for the low hum of freezers and refrigeration units. Slowly, ever so slowly, the killer’s chest began to rise and fall, the whisper of a breath escaping his lungs. Just as the man was about to cheer in celebration, the killer bolted upright, eyes filled with a deep panic as skin and flesh dropped off his bones. Tortured screamed fell from his mouth, garbled words falling over each other as he writhed in utter agony.

“P-p-p-p-pplea-a-a-a-se help-help-help-help-help m-m-m-”

A shot echoed through the laboratory, a smoking gun in the man’s hand as the damned’s body dropped back onto the gurney. He sighed and picked up a holoboard, letting it float in the air as he made a couple of notes. “Cell regeneration successful, but subject’s body was not compatible with the serum as a whole,” he said, a slight hint of frustration lining each word. “Welp, onto the next test subject.”

Another failure, though admittedly a much more successful failure than some of the others. It may have just been a coincidence, some fluke of misdiagnosis, but he already knew this man had been clinically dead for nearly two days at possible. That was no restarting of a heart; that was resurrection. Rebirth was possible, caught on camera for his records. Now it just had to properly take to a body.

Moving onto the next body, the man repeated the same process, pulling liquid into a small syringe and pushing the contents into muscle tissue.

_Kindness and caring not even endless war could wear down, a broken body refusing to lie down and stop, worker of miracles and savior of lives, a good heart that had bled too hard for too long._

The doctor’s body jolted on the table, muscles tensing in one large seize, before going lifeless once more. There was no sign of breath, no fluids rushing through arteries and veins, no thought processes running through that once brilliant mind. Instead, more blood dripped from the fractured skull, deepening the crack and further destroying the broken eye. 

A growl escaped the man’s lips. He made yet another note onto the holopad, fingers clenched almost into claws. “Subject was wholly incompatible with the serum…in other words, _another_ failure,” he seethed, discarding the used needles into a waste bin and pushing past the two failed experiments. With increasingly pounding steps, he marched up to the third and final body. His words were low, quiet enough for the camera to not pick up. “This one was in the prime of his life when he died. This one must work.”

Perhaps a bit too on the reckless side, he jammed the needle into the soldier’s jugular.

_Trained in the art of overcoming enemies and painting walls red, a soldier hardened by years of war and loss, violence and rage packaged into a killing machine, a man who had gone down fighting off a murderer._

As unceremoniously as the test, the general’s chest rose and fell once before going still again. 

With reckless abandon, the man threw the holoboard across the room, clangs of metal mixing with the echoes of furious shouts. “Damn it! He was _perfect!_ It should’ve _worked!_ ” Snatching a stethoscope off a nearby table, the man held the earpiece up to the man’s chest, searching for any sign of life in between the utter flashes of red hot rage.

Eyes shot open, filled with a burning hatred that only a man with nothing left to lose truly has. Strong hands ripped the stethoscope from the man, tying it around his neck and pulling it taught. Teeth sunk into flesh, spattering blood over both of their clothes.

The man snapped his head back, jamming an elbow into the general’s side before pulling the makeshift noose from his neck. He scrambled away, one hand pressed to his profusely bleeding neck while the other gripped the little gun in his pocket. Involuntarily, his eyes closed for a split second, giving the general enough time to rip off a piece of the table and slash into the man’s torso.

“Ẏ̷̦͔̗͚̄͒ỡ̵̝̤ũ̷̖͈͙̱ ̷̰̈̒̎̕d̷͈͎̯͗͗i̶͈͒̅̍͛ȩ̷̘̗͎̓͒͑̓ ̷͔͉̓̋t̸̛͓̂ơ̶̢̈̚̕d̴̻͂a̸̠̗̯̘̾̋y̴̥̖̌,̷̛͉̭̩ ̴͔̰̃d̸̯̈́͗e̸͈̙̒̓̕m̵̧̫̅̒́͝o̸͈̪̿̊ń̴͚̣͕̕,” he fumed, raising the shard for another strike.

Three loud shots, and the general was dead before his arm had time to swing.

“You don’t deserve my gift,” the man said between gritted teeth, legs almost collapsing under his weight as he shuffled over to the cabinet and grabbed another syringe. With shaking hands, he took what little was left in each vial and filled the needle until it could hold no more. His eyesight wavered, the world turning into a marbling array of colors as he fell onto his knees. No. Not now. He couldn’t die now. He was too important to die now. His _work_ was too important for him to die now.

“Experiment successful…but subject was not truly immortal,” he said between coughs, holding up the syringe to the light. “With the injuries I have sustained…my…only option now is…to test it…on myself.” 

Before he could convince himself otherwise, the man jammed the syringe into his heart. Air rushed out of his lungs as he crumpled to the to the floor, curling up into a tight ball that couldn’t even scream. He could feel every last cell in his body rapidly decaying and regenerating, stipping him down to nothing and reforging it in an unending cycle. He writhed and clutched at his chest, fingers refusing to find his communicator or even his gun. Unable to move or think or even so much as shriek in pain, the man’s vision went dark as he slipped into an agonizing sleep. Even that brought no rest, the periods of unconsciousness swirling with memories not his own. 

“Well, well, well…what do we have here?” a voice said, piercing through the fog of pain and suffering. Through broken vision, the man just made out the form of a short woman with light blonde hair and a simple red dress. She looked down on him with golden eyes, a decidedly sadistic smile stretched across her face. “I must say, I’m almost impressed. You got an immortality serum to work without even touching magic at all. Well, half work, but let’s not argue semantics right now”

“P-p-please…h-h-help…me,” he said between gasps, each word sounding more hollow than the last. “M-m-ake it-t-t-t st-stop-p…” 

The woman kneeled down to his level, cupping his face into her hands. A wave of calm seemed to wash over his body, momentarily suppressing the pain to a more manageable level. At the same time, it filled him with a deep sense of dread. “I don’t know if there’s much I can do about the likes of you. You flew too close to the sun, and now you’ve gotten burned,” she said, tilting her head to the side and narrowing her eyes. “Technology is a powerful thing. It can create just as easily as it can destroy, it can solve problems or make them infinitely worse.”

“There…there m-must be s-s-something,” the man pleaded, grabbing onto the woman’s frail wrist. Strangely, despite its size, her bones felt harder than steel.

She laughed, narrowing her eyes ever so slightly. “I mean, there _is_ something I could do, but I don’t think you’d really want that. The price is pretty high. I’d need your soul, for one…and your service for another,” she said, each word laced with power and the sweet release of sleep. “I need someone good with technology, someone skilled with more advanced weaponry, someone I can count on to help me with particularly…annoying tasks.” 

“I’ll d-do it! P-please…just m-m-make it stop!”

The woman in red smiled, her eyes glowing a deep and harsh red, reminiscent of the call of war and the hunger of blood. She snapped her fingers, the sound reverberating deep inside his malformed skull. At the corners of his vision, he saw the bodies of the three failed experiments begin to float in the air. “What is your name?”

“m̶͞҉̷̧̕͟͢4̷̢̨̕̕̕͞͏̸͏̕͏͘̕͜҉r̴̷̶̛̕̕͘̕͢͞͡͝͝͏͜͟7҉̷̷̕͜͏̡͘҉!̶̧̢̛̛͜͜͜n̵͝͡͞҉̧̧̢̕͡ ̴̷̵̢̧̕͠4͏̷̡͘͟͠҉͜n̵̷̸̕͘̕͟͜͜͢͡͝͞7̴̢̢̢̧̛͘͜͡!̡͝-̵̡̡̛͜͜͞͝͝͡͠͡͝҉̵̨̡͟!̕͝͠҉͏͞҉0̴̡̨̛͘͢͢͞͡҉̶͝ņ̷͝͡҉y҉̵͟҉̧̡͟͞ ̷̶̶̡̢̛6̶̧̕͢͟͟͞!̶̵̡̨̧̡͢͟͟͜͠͡͏̨̕3̸̴̡̢͟͠͝r̸̷̵͜҉̛҉̷̛͘͡͏̸̴!͡͏̨͏͞͏̷̡͜͢͜͏̴̡̢̛͘͟͞5͏̕͠͝c̡̢͘͟͏͘҉!͟҉̸̷̷̛͘͘͜͢͟͞͝-̷̵̢̧̢̧̨̡̛͢͟͢͟͞͝͡͡͡!̢͠””

The world went dark, but not before the woman’s sweet and sadistic and absolutely furious words wormed their way into the deepest portions of his brain.

“Well, my dearest Doctor, I hope you’re ready. This is going to hurt a lot.”


End file.
